Australian cancer experts have welcomed the report published in The Lancet, but say Australia still has big gains to make in overcoming bowel, breast and lung cancers.

The study compares survival rates in 31 countries for the main cancer types, with Australia consistently falling at the top of the league table next to the United States and Japan.

The poorest survival rates were seen in Algeria, Brazil and eastern Europe.

In Australia, Tasmania had the poorest survival rates for most cancers except breast and prostate, where the Northern Territory was the worst performer.

But the British reviewers said state variations were ''generally very small and overall survival was very high, suggesting high standards of health care in most areas''. Cancer Council Australia spokesman Professor Graham Giles said, ''We are looking very good.

''People complain about our health system in Australia but in international comparisons we are doing quite well.''

Recent publications from state-based cancer registries have shown big gains in survival in the past decade.

Professor Giles said good access to drug treatments and well-established screening programs from cancer of the breast and cervix had put Australia in the lead.

But slow uptake of the national bowel screening program being rolled out was not helping the statistics.

Lung cancer ''needs work'', mostly in increased effort to reduce smoking rates, Professor Giles said.

Prostate and pancreatic cancer also had room for improvement but the focus needed to be on research. ''With these ones, what we need is not greater public awareness but more basic research to better understand them,'' he said. AAP